Scenes From a Doorway

So you are on a train, rolling across the plains of Central India. What do you do? Simple…you sit in the doorway of the carriage, with your feet on the steel footplate, and watch the pageant of rural India sweep by:

Curling diesel smoke.

A man grazing 2 cows in the shade of a tree.

Endless dry cotton fields.

A distant swell of low, distant hills, beige against the opaque sky.

Rivers flowing between banks of smooth red sandstone.

The rhythm of the bogies on the rails.

A herd of brown and white cows drinking at a river.

A wooden cart drawn by 2 white bullocks through a sea of green and yellow mustard.

At the railway crossings, tuk-tuks and trucks, cars and carts.A man in a white shirt picking snow-white cotton bolls.

A woman in an orange sari alone on a dirt path.

Hours later, beyond Manjur, the triple stacks of a coal-fired power station filled the air with a silver-blue haze.